Tammi Woodard…Gone Country

I came from a house in Tulsa, when I was four to what I thought was the wild, Wild West. First we moved to a house on Hadley Mountain in Locust Grove called the Ponderosa, no running water or electricity,  we weren’t even sure where the closest town was.

It was scary to me at first, our move there was not the most calming experience, Mom, Cindy and I had to stay with some friends of Mom’s in Broken Arrow, Dad, Rudy and the dogs went to the country. Rudy’s appendix busted and he had to have surgery and stay in the hospital, then I fed Cindy lighter fluid, from what I thought was a baby bottle and she was in another hospital, and of course the dogs wouldn’t eat because they were misplaced without Cindy and me. When everyone got well, we moved.

We were so far out in the country that it was still considered open range, wild pigs, snakes, cattle, and all of nature you could stand.

Snakes were bigger than big and very plentiful there. Dad, Rudy and I were cutting wood one day and heard the neighbors shooting, over and over again. Dad decided he would go check it out and see what was going on; to his surprise it was a huge Rattle Snake. Dad had Rudy go get his big rifle and then Dad shot the snake. It was longer than Dad was tall, bout 8foot long. Rudy took it home to Mom and she had Rudy skin it, then Mom invited the neighbors over for

dinner. Little did they know till dinner was over they had just ate rattle snake. It was very good.

Shortly after we moved there we meant a family named Charley and Vicky Conley, one day while visiting, Charley’s prize rooster got after me.  Screaming like the little girl I was, Mom and Vicky heard me and came to my rescue. Vicky opened the front door and yelled for me to come in, so as I ran by her she grabbed that rooster and wrung his neck off.

They had Charley’s chicken for dinner that night, He wasn’t even mad, he laughed.

We lived there two years. Like the old timers say when telling a story we did sometimes have to walk to catch the school bus. The bus couldn’t make it up the hill, whether it being caused by snow or by the mischief of boys cutting trees down on Halloween, it was an experience of a life time rolled up in two years.

There were calves born, we lost one horse in the rain and we lost one big bull in the pond, Tawny, the dog got snake bit repeatedly, but life was soon to change for the better In 1965, my parents, John and Tressye Woodard bought the farm that they lived on for 40 years, down below the mountain, with running water and electricity, what a difference that was to by then a six year old.

Dad would work days at McDonald Douglas, driving around fifty miles to work, and fifty miles back, and then come home to get our new farm ready for us to move into. It was a rock farm house with two barns and a spring fed pond, I thought it was beautiful compared to what I had just came from.
Slowly but surely moving day was approaching.

The farm, through the woods from the Ponderosa was about five miles, and wouldn’t you know, as Mom called it a wagon trail leading down the hill lead right to the drive way of our new farm house, and my Mother being the country girl and very determined woman she was, here we go.

Dad was at work and she decides to move the cattle down to the farm.
Plan is, as only you can imagine, is to get the cattle, about thirty, to follow the old station wagon with a bale of hay in it, Mom, Cindy and me. Rudy to stay behind the cows on the horse to get the ones that left the other cows, Mom would open gates, then just barbwire, and would keep things moving. Without a flaw it worked. Mission accomplished. I would have loved to have a picture of my Dad’s face when he came home.

How many of us would do that today?

All was moved, and life began.

We had a big garden, chickens, ducks, gunnies, cows, horses and pigs and one goat.

In 1968 when Mama Carr passed because, Mom was the only Carr Sister that lived on the farm we got Mama Carr’s two geese and several ducks. Geese that my cousins had teased to no end and were by that time very mean.

Most of the time on Dad’s days off, which was weekends, was time to give cattle shots, clean barns, and rotor till the garden and do something with the many chickens that were roaming around, then in the summer time off to Spring Creek.

Rudy graduated from high school shortly after we moved there and it was my job to get the cattle in, usually by horseback, sometimes we would walk the pasture for what seemed like hours before finding then, but we would.

Dad would usually hang the overabundance of roosters on the close line to cut off their necks, but one day, Mom, Tressye, again being the determined woman she is, decided she wanted a chicken for dinner and that her and I could kill it, by ourselves, what a mess that turned into. Here is the plan, Mom told me, I was to stretch the chicken’s neck across the log and Mom with an axe would chop the chickens head off, now close to a teenager and reluctant to be doing this, but did cause Mom told me to.  Heyyah, she yelled and with one swift swing I let go. The axe grazing the chicken’s neck, if you have ever stretched a chicken’s neck they don’t go back in place, it stays stretched out. The chase was on, we had to catch the misshapen chicken that was running around the yard and squawking. We cried, and chase, nothing. We laughed and chased still nothing.  Mom then told me we were going to have to go get Vicky, we had already seen her catch a running chicken, and she did just that. Vicky picked her spot and told Mom and me to run the chicken by her and she would see if she could catch it, and catch it she did, Mom got her chicken for dinner that night.

These are a few stories of many; living on a farm was a very eventful time for me. Snakes were still plentiful, and the farm was still hard work, I’m grown now with my three boys, John, Cory and Nicky who enjoyed the farm while they were growing up. It was the most relaxing place we knew to go when life in the city got rough. It is missed, and will never be forgotten.

Tammi